George J. Mitchell
George John Mitchell Jr. is an American politician, diplomat, and lawyer. A leading member of the Democratic Party, he served as a United States senator from Maine from 1980 to 1995, and as Senate Majority Leader from 1989 to 1995. After retiring from the Senate, Mitchell played a leading role in negotiations for peace in Northern Ireland and the Middle East. He was appointed United States Special Envoy for Northern Ireland by President Clinton and as United States Special Envoy for Middle East Peace by President Barack Obama.
Mitchell was a primary architect of the 1996 Mitchell Principles and the 1998 Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland, and was the main investigator in two "Mitchell Reports": one on the Arab–Israeli conflict ; and one on the use of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball.
Mitchell served as chairman of the Walt Disney Company from 2004 until 2007, and later as chairman of the international law firm DLA Piper. He was the Chancellor of Queen's University in Belfast, Northern Ireland, from 1999 to 2009. Mitchell also has served as a co-chair of the Housing Commission at the Bipartisan Policy Center. He is one of the few people in modern times to have served in the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the federal government.
To date, he is the last registered Democrat to represent Maine in the U.S. Senate.
Early life
Origins
Mitchell was born in Waterville, Maine. His father, George John Mitchell Sr., was born in Ireland and adopted by a Lebanese American when he was orphaned. Mitchell's father was a janitor at Colby College in Waterville, where Mitchell was raised. Mitchell's mother, Mary, was a textile worker who immigrated to the United States in 1920 from Bkassine, Lebanon, at the age of eighteen.Mitchell was raised a Maronite Catholic and in his childhood served as an altar boy at St. Joseph's Maronite Church in Maine. Throughout junior high school and high school, he worked as a janitor. In the family of five children, all three of his brothers were athletes; though a talented student as a child, he found himself overshadowed by his brothers' athletic achievements.
Education and military service
After graduating from high school at the age of sixteen, Mitchell attended Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, where he worked several jobs and played on the basketball team. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1954, intending to attend graduate school and then teach, but instead served in the United States Army from 1954 to 1956, rising to first lieutenant. In 1961, Mitchell received his Bachelor of Laws from Georgetown University Law Center by attending its part-time program at night. He has since received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Bates College.Political career
Early legal career
After having performed well academically at Georgetown, Mitchell served as a trial attorney for the Antitrust Division of the United States Department of Justice in Washington from 1960 to 1962, and then as executive assistant to Senator Edmund S. Muskie from 1962 to 1965, where he first gained interest in the political world. Afterwards, Mitchell practiced law with Jensen & Baird in Portland, Maine, from 1965 to 1977 and was assistant county attorney for Cumberland County, Maine, in 1971.From judge to senator
In 1974, Mitchell won the Democratic nomination for governor of Maine, defeating Joseph E. Brennan. He lost in the general election to independent candidate James B. Longley, but was appointed United States Attorney for Maine by President Jimmy Carter in 1977. Mitchell served in that capacity from 1977 to 1979.Mitchell was nominated by President Carter on July 31, 1979, to the United States District Court for the District of Maine, to a new seat authorized by 92 Stat. 1629. He was confirmed by the Senate on October 4, 1979, and received his commission on October 5, 1979. His service terminated on May 16, 1980, due to his resignation.
Mitchell was appointed to the United States Senate in May 1980 by the governor of Maine, Joseph Brennan, when Edmund Muskie resigned to become US Secretary of State.
After serving out the remainder of Muskie's term, Mitchell was elected to his first full term in 1982 by 99,937 votes against Congressman David Emery, and rose quickly in the Senate Democratic leadership. He was elected as the chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in 1984, helping the Democrats regain control of the Senate in 1986 with a net eight new seats and a 55–45 majority in the Senate. He served as Deputy President pro tempore in the 100th United States Congress, because of the illness of president pro tempore John C. Stennis, and remains the only senator other than Hubert Humphrey to have held that post.
The position of deputy president pro tempore was created specifically to be held by a current senator who is a former president or former vice president of the United States. Humphrey is a former vice president of the United States and Mitchell is the only person to have been deputy president pro tempore who has never held one or both of the two highest offices of the US government.
In 1988 Mitchell was reelected by 348,417 votes, the largest margin of victory in a Senate election that year and the largest majority ever for a senator from Maine.
Mitchell voted in favor of the bill establishing Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a federal holiday and the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987. Mitchell voted against the nominations of Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court, stating explicitly that he believed Thomas' nomination constituted a racial quota.
Senate Majority Leader
Mitchell served as Senate Majority Leader from 1989 to 1995. While in this role, Mitchell led the movement to reauthorize the Clean Air Act in 1990 and pass the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. Additionally, under his leadership, the Senate approved the North American Free Trade Agreement and the formation of the World Trade Organization.In 1994, Mitchell turned down an offer of appointment by President Bill Clinton to the United States Supreme Court, to replace the retiring Harry A. Blackmun so that he could continue helping with efforts in the Senate to pass significant health-care legislation. The seat ultimately went to Stephen Breyer. Nevertheless, Congress was not able to pass any significant health-care legislation at the time, and Mitchell did not run for reelection in 1994.
Political leanings
For 1994, Mitchell's last year in the Senate, the American Conservative Union gave him a rating of 0.00 on a scale of 0 to 100, with 100 being most conservative. For the same year, the Americans for Democratic Action gave him a score of 90 on a scale of 0 to 100, with 100 being most liberal.After the Senate
Mitchell has served as a director of companies including Walt Disney Company; FedEx; Xerox; Unilever; Staples, Inc.; Starwood; and the Boston Red Sox baseball team. After leaving the Senate, Mitchell joined the Washington, D.C., law firm Verner, Liipfert, Bernhard, McPherson and Hand; he later became the firm's chairman. He was criticized for lobbying on behalf of the firm's Big Tobacco clients. He is also senior counsel to Preti, Flaherty, Beliveau, Pachios, Orlick & Haley in Portland, Maine. He is partner and chairman of the Global Board of DLA Piper, US LLP, a global law firm. Mitchell served as an Advisor of ZeniMax Media Inc. He has also served on the advisory board of The Iris Network, a nonprofit blindness rehabilitation agency in Portland.In 2007, Mitchell joined fellow former Senate Majority Leaders Howard Baker, Bob Dole, and Tom Daschle to found the Bipartisan Policy Center, a non-profit think tank that works to develop policies suitable for bipartisan support.
Democratic politics
Mitchell was reportedly among those considered by Al Gore as a running mate for his 2000 presidential run, but Gore selected Joe Lieberman. Had Mitchell been nominated and had the Democratic ticket won that year, he would have been the first Lebanese American to serve as the vice president of the United States, and only the second vice president from Maine, after Hannibal Hamlin. He also was mentioned in both 2000 and in 2004 as a potential secretary of state for a Democratic administration, due to his role as Senate Leader and the Good Friday agreements.Education
Since 2002, Mitchell has been a senior fellow and senior research scholar at Columbia University's Center for International Conflict Resolution, where he works to help end or avert conflicts between nations. He was the chancellor of the Queen's University of Belfast, Northern Ireland, until his resignation in April 2009, and namesake of the George J. Mitchell Scholarship, which sponsors graduate study for twelve Americans each year in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.He is the founder of the Mitchell Institute, in Portland, Maine, whose mission is to increase the likelihood that young people from every community in Maine will aspire to, pursue and achieve a college education. In 2007, he became a visiting Professor in Leeds Metropolitan University's School of Applied Global Ethics, and the university is developing a new Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution bearing his name.